WITH HIS TWO NOVELS AND ONE collection of stories already published, Ewan Morrison has proven himself an expert navigator through the treacherous waters of sexuality and relationships. Unflinching in his examination of love and sex in the modern age,
he exposes the psychology of how we relate to each other underneath the façade of everyday life.
Ménage continues that theme, being a shrewd and insightful look at a complex love triangle, set in the perhaps unlikely environs of the burgeoning Young British Artists scene of London in the early 1990s, a cauldron of self-obsessed creativity which famously threw up the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.
We begin with two struggling artists, Owen – through whose eyes we see much of what occurs – and Saul. Saul is the archetypal mouthy, narcissistic, nihilistic, destructive artistic sort, poaching pithy quotes from Nietzsche to construct a worldview, cross-dressing and drinking cheap sherry by the box. Owen is his disciple, an acquiescent young man confused by his obsession with his friend, and struggling to find his own path to artistic expression.
Into this mix comes Dot, a spoilt rich kid, Joni Mitchell fan and painter of watercolours who quickly falls under Saul's spell, throws away her mood-stabilising medication and chucks herself into the heady world of conceptual and instillation art.
All this is delivered with pace, assuredness and no small amount of comedy, as we dive headlong into a world of disused warehouse galleries and booze-soaked arguments. . We then fast-forward to the present day, where Dot has become an internationally acclaimed artist, Owen is a jobbing freelance art critic and Saul has disappeared completely. Morrison begins switching back and forth between the two time frames, expertly planting seeds which suggest the threesome's original collision in the 1990s ended far from happily.
And so it transpires. Inevitably the three-way relationship between Dot, Owen and Saul becomes more complex as the book progresses, both in terms of sexual liaisons and with regards to artistic inspiration. Much of the work Dot eventually becomes famous for is inspired by one of her two friends, although exactly which one is open to debate, a situation which cleverly mirrors their confused and damaging personal relationships.
It is in the depiction of this that Morrison excels. All relationships are power struggles, and with these three the subtle emotional manipulations and machinations become ever more frightening. As their ménage à trois grows, there is passive-aggressive manoeuvring, violent oneupmanship, submissive cowering and ultimately incredibly destructive and self-destructive behaviour, all of which threaten the lives of those involved.
This might sound like heavy-duty stuff, but Morrison superbly couches it in a readable, light-hearted style, full of pop culture references, self-deprecation and an awareness of the ridiculousness of his characters' self-imposed predicament. The period detail from the early 1990s is spot-on, from the music and fashion to the paradoxical feelings of importance and pointlessness which afflicted the Young British Artists movement and all the attention-grabbing conceptual guff they threw at the media in an attempt to redefine art for their generation.
But for all that such stuff is great fun, the real tension in Ménage comes in the present day storyline. After years apart, Owen reconnects with Dot in the build-up to a major retrospective of her work, when he agrees to write text to accompany the show.
All of Dot's art is based around video installations, many of the pieces featuring footage of the trio's younger selves, and the revisiting of that work conjures up all sorts of ghosts for Owen, things he has suppressed for the last 15 years.
Almost without thinking, Owen and Dot, who now has a four-year-old daughter to think about, fall into becoming sexually involved again.
Inevitably, Saul re-enters the picture, now apparently sober and sensible, and there is a sense of history repeating itself as the three struggle to come to terms with their intertwined emotions, both from the past and in the present.
Morrison expertly brings both storylines to gripping climaxes, and just when everything seems to be disintegrating, conjures up an amazingly moving and resonant finale, one that subtly exposes the ingrained symbiotic relationship of the three protagonists.
Frightening, funny, perceptive, emotional and honest, Ménage is an excellent piece of work from a clearly gifted writer.
• Ewan Morrison will be talking about his novel at Waterstone's in Edinburgh's West End (128 Princes Street) on Thursday, 9 July, at 6pm (tickets free from branch). He is at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Monday 17 August.
The full article contains 792 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
